Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Brome, what are you doing?” It was Brighton, on the chopper’s radio. Four minutes had passed since takeoff. He needed nine more to get there. He ignored his partner, but did not turn the radio off.
“Brome, I know you’re there. The cameras picked you up. We’re tracking you heading north. Listen, whatever it is, you’re not thinking straight. Land the chopper and surrender. I talked to some people here. They know about the pills. They’re willing to give you a long medical leave with full pay. I’m talking three, maybe four months paid vacation. Just don’t do anything stupid.”
The radio stayed silent for two minutes. When Brome showed no sign of following the instructions, Brighton returned.
“Listen to me. You should know how edgy everyone is today. First the Pope, then we get word Whales drove a car-bomb into some lab…” A pause. “Now you’re stealing a chopper and flying it in the same direction. Not too hard to make a connection. They think you might be headed to finish the job. That you and Whales are friends now. Of course, I know better than that, but…” Here Brighton lowered his voice. “They want to blast you out of the sky. The only reason you’re still airborne is because I keep telling them you’re not the sort to blow up a building. That you’re not crazy. Help me out here, partner. Land somewhere we can talk.”
Down below him the Chicagoland sprawled like an old bed sheet. He had complete feel for the machine now; the inevitable rust was off. Also, now that he was in the air, Brome had complete control of himself.
Brighton was bluffing. He knew as well as Brome that FBI choppers did not carry any missiles. Twin eighteen-millimeter machine guns were the extent of their armament. A chopper like that would do well against infantry, but there wasn’t enough firepower to damage a building much, let alone blow one up. Same went for blasting him out of the sky. Even a civilian would not immediately catch an anti-air rocket less than thirty miles from O’Hare. For an FBI agent there would be calls made, then there would be an escort. A couple of fighter planes to make sure he didn’t reach anything important. It would be at least fifteen minutes between the first call and the escort reaching him from Chanute Air Force Base. All Brome needed was five more.
“Oliver,” Brighton’s voice said. “Grace and Annie are here at the office. They’re worried sick. We all are. Do them a favor. Land the chopper before it’s too late. Come on, partner. Don’t throw it all away.”
Brome shook his head. Another bluff. Had his family really been there, they would be on the radio right now. He knew Brighton well enough to expect that.
Just then, a dying cloud of smoke and the distinct black rectangle of the facility appeared on the northern horizon.
“Brighton,” Brome said into the microphone. “Stall them. I’m not going to blow anything up. This is a rescue mission, not an assault. I’ll bring the chopper back to the HQ in twenty minutes.”
Switching the radio off, he began to descend.
Chapter Forty
The song of helicopter blades that greeted us when the elevator doors opened could have easily topped every chart in the world. Top it off with the brightest sunshine I had ever squinted against and the touch of frigid November wind on my wet hair, and even thoughts of Dr. Young’s sacrifice loosened their hold on my conscience. The pain in my shoulder I had forgotten completely.
Still holding on to Iris, who must have been freezing in her attire, I stepped out on the roof’s black surface. The sound of the helicopter was coming from the north, from behind the gray squat box of the elevator chamber. Turning, I saw its whirring blades over the top.
“Good old Brome,” I said and started skipping towards it, when Paul’s hand grabbed my maimed shoulder and pulled me back behind the cover of the wall. I howled in pain, but before I could punch him in the face, a volley of automatic gunfire erupted from the chopper’s direction. Iris and I dropped to the floor and crawled back to the elevator.
Bullets whizzed, ricocheted with sickening, resounding CHOWs off the walls and tore the black vinyl of the roof’s surface to shreds all around us. Throwing my hand forward, I prevented the elevator from closing.
Paul returned fire, sticking the gun out around the corner.
“Four!” he shouted through the cacophony. “Coming around the right side.”
Taking a quick peek, I saw four surprisingly black shapes circling in from the left, behind the cover of vents, satellite dishes and stairway exits that concentrated mostly in the rear half of the roof. The damned elevator chamber we’d come out of grew like a boil in the dead middle, twenty or so feet from the roof’s façade edge. Not a single piece of jutting terrain for miles around it.
“There’re four on the left, too!”
Pushing Iris back into the elevator, I readied the gun. No longer chaotic, the bullets continued to rain around us, as the two squads advanced methodically. One bullet took a chunk out of the corner, showering my face with concrete dust. Paul and I were both shooting back now, hitting nothing at all.
“Shit!” Paul’s shout came behind my back.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “This doesn’t look good at all.”
Something hit the back of my knee. It was Paul’s head. He was on his back, face a grimace of pain, blood on my jeans, a black hole in his white shoulder.
“Paul!”
“Hurts like a motherfucker,” he growled through clenched teeth. “My bulletproof vest is defective. I wanna talk to a supervisor.” I pushed him into the elevator as gently as I could in my hurry and picked up the gun he’d dropped. It became quickly apparent that the extra gun would not do me any good even if I had two operational arms. Both squads were at the last point of cover. They were ready to advance into the final stretch of open space. Heavy suppressing fire chewed up corners, preventing me from further assessing the situation. I assessed it well enough in my brain, though. In about thirty five seconds it would all be over.
Slinking inside the elevator I looked down at Paul and Iris, who knelt beside him, trying to do something she didn’t quite know what about the wound. I placed my pistol by Iris’s bare knee. Paul caught my gaze and held it. I shook my head.
“We have to go back down.”
“We can’t.”
“We’ll take our chances with the guards downstairs. At least they don’t have armor-piercing rounds in their guns.”
“All right, man,” Paul said, but even as he did he was shaking his head. And I knew he was right. There was no point. I stuck my head out of the doorway. The eastern crew was advancing across the open. I took a shot and missed, but for a moment they went flat, returning fire. I didn’t bother checking the other side, assuming the picture was the same there. The masterpiece of the famous French painter Fuckuover De Lastmoment, called, “Au revoir, le suckers.”
“We surrender!” I shouted. The shooting stopped. “We surrender. Don’t shoot.”
There was a long silence, disturbed only by whirring helicopter blades, the sound of which I no longer found appealing. Silence long enough for the squad leaders to confer with their superiors. Silence so long that it spoke volumes.
“Come out with your hands up,” a voice replied finally. “You will not be harmed.” Even as I heard it, I knew he was lying. Take no prisoners had been the answer. Reconfirmed. They meant to kill us. All of us.
I took another peek eastwards. Four dark-clad soldiers were kneeling some fifty-feet away, guns breathing suddenly hot air. Guns that would kill me as soon as I stepped out into the open.